December 11, 2017

The result of elections in the Australian state of
Queensland is expected to bring reassurance to the country's renewable energy
sector, after preliminary results showed a win for Labour.

During the election campaign the Queensland Labour party
said it was committing A$50 million to the state's first solar thermal with
storage project and aiming for 50% of Queensland's energy to be renewable by
2030.

Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the renewable
energy would be a mixture of solar and wind, with battery and pumped hydro
storage.

The policy promise was in contrast to the Liberal National
Party's promise to build a new coal-fired power station in the north of the
state. During the campaign Palaszczuk pulled back on earlier pledges to back
a huge
coal mine, constructed by Indian company Adani, in north Queensland.

The final result of the election is still unclear with
counting continuing on Monday 27 November, although Labour is predicted to win
a slight majority or take enough seats to have a working minority government.

Energy law expert Kate
Terry of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com, said:
“Assuming Labour gets a majority, the election results are reassuring news for
the renewables industry. Queensland has championed a pipeline of large scale
solar projects.

“To see this momentum continue will be encouraging not just
for industry participants in Queensland but also for more large scale
development across Australia,” Terry said.

The news from Queensland follows intense focus on the
Australian energy market this year. In June Australia's
chief scientist Alan Finkel said in a report the country should adopt a
single, nationally agreed plan to manage its national electricity market and to
help the transition to lower emissions.

In October the federal government put forward a series
of energy market reforms, known as the National Energy Guarantee, which
would require energy retailers, and some large energy users, to meet a
reliability target of dispatchable energy from ready-to-use sources, while
meeting an emissions target set at a level that will enable Australia to meet
its international climate change commitments.

However the Labour party, which is in opposition in the
federal government, said the plan was focusing on reliability at the expense of
meeting the renewable target proposed by Finkel earlier in the year.